Petrichor
by mr-raindrops
Summary: Sometime in the future, Nijimura's father passes away and Akashi tries to understand, but he has his own struggles to deal with. (They're all weary souls here.)


**Implications of mental illness, attempted suicide; character death; potential (very very possible lol) OOC-ness. **

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_Petrichor_

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None of his memories of hospitals were wholly pleasant, though that in itself isn't a rarity for most people. Perhaps it could be considered a rather nice surprise to see his old captain when he is wandering through the corridors of an unfamiliar ward in the hospital, of all places.

"It's been a long time, Nijimura-san," Seijuurou greets, watching as Nijimura whirl around at the call of his name.

Nijimura's stare is still piercing, penetrates to where his memories are stored, until he feels foreign and light, like twelve years old again. "What the hell are you doing here, Akashi?"

Seijuurou smiles - to tell or to not tell. "I should be asking the same of you."

(The last time they'd seen each other was in Nijimura's third year, during his graduation; the only thing from the ceremony that Seijuurou remembers clearly is the way that Nijimura caught his eyes, the longing to apologize for not being able to apologize, for he had other weight to carry. Seijuurou had liked to think that it was not necessary – after all, he admits that this was mostly his own fault.)

.

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"Come, Seijuurou," Father had said to him, gesturing into the room, and Seijuurou did not hesitate in following, clutching the teddy bear Mother had bought for him his previous birthday. Or at least, he remembered it to be a teddy bear.

A nurse stepped around him when he entered; surrounding the only bed in the room, another three strangers stood around his mother, hooked up to some kind of monitor on the bedside table. There was an entire network of plastic tubing connected to her body, the complexity of it making Seijuurou's mind spin helplessly, because he did not understand.

Her face was wan in the pale light – the dull, greyed sky outside did not help the lighting – and she was staring up at the ceiling, though it did not seem like she was looking at anything at all.

Then, slowly, she shifted her gaze to the teddy, and then their eyes locked. She smiled, one side of her lips tilting up weakly.

Seijuurou's feet carried him out without his conscious knowing, and his lungs could not get quite enough breathable air. There was something about the room, about the gentle way forced and trembling tranquility and acceptance crept upon him, that prevented him from going back in. Father doesn't come to get him, either.

There was a bench right by the doorway, and a narrow, horizontal window into the room above it. Seijuurou clambered up onto the bench, a part of him chastising his behaviour, while another, a more foreign side of him, urges him to stretch his arms as high as he could, waving his teddy bear.

He should have smiled back, he should have said hello, but Mother will see, he told himself. And she'll know.

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Supervision had been lax for Seijuurou the past few days - in fact, they had even considered discharging him. He sneaks out in the much-too-early-to-be-awake-hours of the morning, craving fresh air, and somehow ends up sitting side by side with Nijimura in the courtyard at six thirty.

"My old man's dying," he says, glancing sideways at Seijuurou. "I can't even yell at him for it, if this keeps up."

He doesn't say it, simple and clear, like he usually does.

"I'm sorry." Seijuurou thinks of his own ineptitude in that department, and even though he feels like a hypocrite, he tells him, "Nijimura-san, I don't mean to intrude in your business, but isn't it wiser to simply speak your mind?"

Nijimura shoots him a look, somewhere on the bridge between annoyance and frustration. "Don't tell me what to do. What would you know about this?" When Seijuurou just stares back, because truthfully, he never would be able to understand, Nijimura's voice quiets, though the words don't sound any less harsh. "Besides, that's easier said than done."

(Besides, what about you?)

Seijuurou can smell the oncoming rain in the humid air, and tilting his head back to look at the outline of the building against the sky, answers vaguely, "that might be true."

(The day Nijimura had handed captaincy to him, it had rained in the evening; a small drizzle, but Seijuurou managed to stand outside without an umbrella long enough for it to drench through his uniform. There was no one home who would scold him, but he reprimanded himself until he felt guilty, and forced himself indoors, to where the soothing sound of rainfall was muted by thick walls.)

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Mother wanted a funeral in her home village. The entire event was a strange ordeal, though it may be just because Seijuurou was too young at the time, and perhaps reality took more time to sink in for children than for adults.

The nanny did not tell him where they were going, but he slid into the seat of the limo without needing an explanation, buckling his seatbelt obediently. The nanny's expression was sullen, which had stricken Seijuurou as odd, though he did not bother to question it, even when she clasped her fingers around his hand, uncomfortably tight.

With the unpleasant smell of leather filling his nostrils, he fell asleep halfway through the ride, his cheek against the seatbelt as if it was a pillow. They arrived in the countryside, and the breeze made Seijuurou shiver when he stepped out, though it was quite refreshing and tugged him from the drowsiness of the stuffy air inside the vehicle. He had always hated riding in limos.

His nanny did not let go of him as they walked along a stone wall, and Seijuurou remembered looking down to see tufts of deep green grass and weeds springing out along the base of the wall.

Eventually, after walking down the rural path, there came a break in the walls. Inside, there was a continuation of the path from outside, its perimeters edged with numerous rooms, some of them roofless. If Seijuurou was to think of a way to describe them, he would say that they lined up to each other like small stores on an old cobblestone street, with the front being completely see-through glass, almost like display windows. Some had thick curtains drawn, but through the ones that did not, Seijuurou saw the vague outline of a glass coffin, and a body lying within.

He didn't look away, until they had passed and it was inevitable.

The room where Mother was had been the only one lit, illuminated by a single dangling incandescent bulb. There was a small crowd, consisting of relatives whom Seijuurou would visit once a year._  
_

That had been the first time he had seen Father so vulnerable, his shoulder trembling noticeably as he wept into his hands. (It would be the first and only time.)

He tipped up on his toes, peeking at Mother sleeping there in a bed of her favourite flowers, encased by glass.

The sky was darkening into a stormy shade of grey, and the first raindrop hit the corner of Seijuurou's left eye, sliding down his cheeks, warm and wet.

.

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.

They sedate him, and Seijuurou does not want to remember the reason. He drifts between past and present, dream and reality, an odd thread of semblance twining them into one existence.

He is woken by a boom of thunder – though he isn't entirely sure if he is actually awake – to the sight of Nijimura slumping on a chair by his bed, staring upwards at the ceiling tiles. The room is dim, save for the occasional flashes of lightning.

"Were you lonely?" Nijimura asks, and it's the fact that he doesn't look to confirm that Seijuurou is conscious but still knows that he's awake that almost convinces Seijuurou that he is still asleep.

"Empty," he answers without needing to reflect too much on its depth, having come to this conclusion some while ago. And unexpectedly enough, when he says it aloud, it fills up some of the brimming void. Seijuurou cranes his neck to scan the room, searching for hospital staff members. "They allowed visitors?"

Nijimura just shrugs, without looking at him. Seijuurou takes the time to study his features, his unruly hair, his crumpled dress shirt.

"You're exhausted," Seijuurou remarks, and it draws a scowl out from Nijimura.

"Yeah, well - death is troublesome, you know that?" he says. "Damn old man, going ahead and leaving as if it's by choice. Just waltzing out of this life the way he fucking did."

Seijuurou feigns not noticing his swollen eyes.

(There are strangely placed parallels in their stories, but in this regard, for Seijuurou it's a mind battle – and he has chosen victory; it's somewhat amusing, because in the end, it completes a full circle. And then he promises to himself again, he'll win this one.

He'll win this one.)

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The first time Seijuurou boarded a plane was when he was five, and one of his most distinct memories of it was that he had tried to hold his breath as long as he could, so as not to have to inhale the disgusting smell of seats and cleaning products and the filtration system.

Another thing he recalls was the wonder of watching enlarged clouds floating on by, wanting to ask Father if this is where Heaven is, if there are beings that are unseen by the living. However, Father was asleep and would likely have dismissed it as nonsense, so Seijuurou kept it to himself as he imagined the feathery wings of angels brushing quietly against window.

He remembers pretending that Mother was there as well - her palm resting against the outside of the glass and her smile fuzzy the way it was when she read him bedtime stories when he was only half-awake – and reaching up to where he thought her hand would be, placing his own palm against the window.

The glass was cold, but he didn't retract his hand.

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"It's pretty fucked up, huh?" Nijimura comments the day before his father's funeral, said in a tone that made it seem as if this will be the most trivial topic in the world to converse about. "It's no one's fault, yet we look for someone to blame."

Seijuurou doesn't say anything in response.

But if he were to say something, he would disagree.

(Well, the reason for him being here at the hospital is different; voluntary death is a different matter altogether.)

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Seijuurou only cried once, four years after the funeral, during a dream, and he still remembers the suffocating need to call out for her. She stood just an arm's reach too far from the tips of his limp fingers, his hand suspended by invisible strings that glistened red at sporadic time intervals. She held the teddy bear that she had bought for him, its fur matted and one of its eyes missing.

He woke up to the nanny waving a framed photograph of Mother in front of his face, and asked her what she was doing. She told him that he had been sobbing and requesting for his mother. It escaped Seijuurou as to why showing a picture of said person to him while he's still obviously asleep was logical in any sense.

Seijuurou wiped the back of his hand across his cheekbones, and sure enough, it came away with tears.

The mind is a bizarre thing, he concluded, while he was washing the tear stains from his skin. He had gotten rid of the stuffed toy long ago, and he had no real attachment to it. It's funny, even now. He'd never truly known his mother, but the grief had been there, and it had been real.

The foreign, foreign sorrow lingered. It made him feel light-headed.

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It's been a few weeks, and Father had visited four times, each time hovering by the doorway as if he's afraid of entering a hospital room. Each time, his gaze had gotten a little softer, his posture a little less stiff. And with each visit, Seijuurou feels a little less at fault for 'not being good enough' and feels a little more apologetic for 'putting you through this again'.

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"Would it have turned out different, if I said something?" Nijimura asks, shifting in that uncomfortable metal chair, voice wistful, mixing in with the sound of raindrops tapping on the window panes.

(If you said something, so you didn't have to be on your own?)

"Somewhat, I suppose," he replies, watching the firm stern line of Nijimura's mouth curve into a smirk as he reaches out to muss his hair with a familiar touch.

"You've always been good enough," Nijimura tells him, "from the very beginning."

Seijuurou, for once, doesn't say anything because he doesn't _know _what to say, so he tries a small smile instead. He knows now, that it's just a matter of believing it himself.

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**A/N: **thank you to Infinite Skye and jarofclay42 for reading over this for me you guys must have suffered I'm sorry I was a total wreck omg. any OOC-ness/mistakes are mine

LOL this is straying so far from canon I feel like I just inserted the character names there for the sake of calling it a kurobas fanfic pfft but I feel very much at peace now that I got this out somewhere pheww thanks for reading this horrid thing


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